He was rolling on the rug, communicating contagion. Flasks of
treble-distilled lavender water, and their favourite, traditional in the
family, eau d'Arquebusade, were on the toilet-table. They sprinkled
his basket, liberally sprinkled the rug and the little dog.
Perfume-pastilles were in one of the sitting-rooms below; and Virginia
would have gone down softly to fetch a box, but Dorothea restrained her,
in pity for the servants, with the remark: 'It would give us a nightmare
of a Roman Catholic Cathedral!' A bit of the window was lifted by
Dorothea, cautiously, that prowling outsiders might not be attracted.
Tasso was wooed to his basket. He seemed inquisitive; the antidote of
his naughtiness excited him; his tail circled after his muzzle several
times; then he lay. A silken scarf steeped in eau d'Arquebusade was
flung across him.

Their customary devout observances concluded, lights were extinguished,
and the ladies kissed, and entered their beds.

Their beds were not homely to them. Dorothea thought that Virginia was
long in settling herself. Virginia did not like the sound of Dorothea's
double sigh. Both listened anxiously for the doings of Tasso. He rested.

He was uneasy; he was rounding his basket once more; unaware of the
exaggeration of his iniquitous conduct, poor innocent, he shook that
dreadful coat of his! He had displaced the prophylactic cover of the
scarf.

He drove them in a despair to speculate on the contention between the
perfume and the stench in junction, with such a doubt of the victory
of which of the two, as drags us to fear our worst. It steals into our
nostrils, possesses them. As the History of Mankind has informed us, we
were led up to our civilization by the nose. But Philosophy warns us on
that eminence; to beware of trusting exclusively to our conductor, lest
the mind of us at least be plunged back into barbarism. The ladies
hated both the cause and the consequence, they had a revulsion from the
object, of the above contention. But call it not a contention: there is
nobility in that. This was a compromise, a degrading union, with very
sickening results. Whether they came of an excess of the sprinkling,
could not well be guessed. The drenching at least was righteously
intended.

Beneath their shut eyelids, they felt more and more the oppression of a
darkness not laden with slumber. They saw it insolidity; themselves
as restless billows, driven dashing to the despondent sigh. Sleep was